The Failure of Self-Translation in Catalan Literature

Abstract

In recent years, self-translation has become almost essential among contemporary Catalan writers. The translation of their own work mainly into Spanish opens them a larger literary market. Aware of this, publishers try to institute a general policy to favour it. More often than not, this policy involves “imposing” self-translations and publishing both Catalan and Spanish versions at the same time—occasionally failing to mention which one is the original, or even worse, failing to mention one of them is in fact a translation. Despite all this, the impact of Catalan literature into the Spanish market does not seem to be remarkable. Conversely, Catalan authors who write in Spanish hardly ever self-translate into Catalan, but their works (in some cases) are translated into Catalan by professional translators, achieving relatively good success. In view of this, in this chapter I will try to answer the following questions: Are the traditional arguments to self-translate Catalan literature into Spanish still up to date and valid? If the Catalan market does not appreciate authorship as a value, does it make sense to self-translate? Could writing first in Spanish be the next step? It may well be so, according to the patterns followed by recent popular Catalan writers (e.g. Sànchez Pinyol) who wrote their latest novels first in Spanish and were later rendered into Catalan by professional translators, not being penalised either by Catalan or by Spanish readers—Catalan readers showed no objection to buying those translations, while Spanish readers were interested in them knowing they had been firstly written in Spanish. Is this the failure of self-translation in Catalan literature?